


Commonplace

by narsus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Incest, M/M, Masturbation, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:50:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the body overrides the mind, with completely unintended consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commonplace

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to the BBC, Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat, and obviously in the genesis of it all, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sometimes the body overrides the mind. Not often but frequently enough. Sherlock has spent years learning coping mechanisms to deal with that reoccurring eventuality. He recites the times tablets in his head, counts as far as he can manage in as many languages as he recalls, revises the periodic table. Most of the time it works, most of the time he can will his body back under his control. He managed it at school, and at university, so he can, so he reasons, manage it again. Except this time it’s far more difficult than usual, because the hallway still reeks of Mycroft’s cologne and the scent seeps relentlessly under his door. It’s worse because he chooses to notice it, and for once he wonders what it would be like to indulge in some sort of physical release. He could, if he chose to, do what men the world over have been doing for millennia without any ill consequences, after all.

Arousal is a natural reaction, he acknowledges. Arousal at inopportune times doubly so. He could indulge. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t even be noticed or remarked upon by anybody else. He’d know what he’d done but it wouldn’t occupy his thoughts, it wouldn’t need to. _The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it._ Yielding will cleanse his mind, clear it of the unnecessary clutter that a hormonal surge is causing. He can’t give a reason for the reaction; he’s deliberately divorced it from all possible connection in his mind, so he can only ride it out. He can deal with the problem and move on, which is what he always does. It will become dull and uninteresting once he has dealt with the matter after all, and perhaps, if he deals with it now, it will stave off a few minutes boredom.

Decision made, he proceeds to lock the door of his bedroom, strip naked and climb under the bedcovers, wriggling to get comfortable. Lying on his stomach isn’t particularly conducive to initial experiments, especially when the position really calls for his arms to be wrapped around the pillow, rather than slid beneath his stomach. Likewise, flat on his back does nothing to inspire more carnal exploration. Rolling over on his side feels more like preparation for sleep. Yet for all his experimental repositioning, the urge doesn’t vanish like it usually would. In fact, all that stalling the process does is frustrate him. Lying on his back again, he stretches his arms above his head, clutching at the pillow, and spreads his legs under the sheets. Still, somehow it simply isn’t quite enough to prompt him any further.

It’s with a low hiss of irritation that Sherlock throws back the covers and roughly pulls on his dressing-gown. It’s there, like an itch that he just can’t seem to reach, an edge of frustration, of desire for something that he usually tries to deny. Normally it vanishes, leaving his mind clear and his equilibrium restored as he asserts mind over matter, but today the sensation lingers. Just beyond the edge of his reason, beyond his grasp, and now he’s considered succumbing to it, it won’t leave him be. Tying his dressing-gown closed tightly is no help, nor is reaching for the key in the lock. Some irrational part of his ego can’t bear to return to the living room defeated. It’s an irrational thought and one that, in his clearer moments, he’d identify for the false logic that it is.

He’ still undecided on his course of action when he throws himself down onto the bed again. Crawling up the bed, so that he can rest his head on the pillow, tangles the fabric of his dressing-gown between his legs, and when he flops over onto his back, the material falls away and his bent knees are greeted by cold air. Now or never he supposes. Except ‘never’ has usually been his preference. He has no use for the physical, the material, the pedestrian. All of it is transitory. Nothing but the compulsive pull of hormones and faltering willpower. Yet here he is, all reasoning aside, his fine logic thwarted by the treachery of his body. No amount of willpower, no refinement of intellect or reason is of any use now. So he decides that he will deal with the matter swiftly, so at least, in that, he can return to his usual functionality, sooner, rather than later. Decision made, the most expedient thing is to snake a hand down between his legs and simply get on with it. A quick solution to a pointless question. Rapidity is the key, so that he doesn’t have to dwell on the pointlessness of it all, even while he indulges.

Unfortunately, his body has other ideas. The sensation of weight against his own stomach as he eases his hand down makes him tremble. It’s a weakness that’s both as intriguing as it is disturbing. His skin seems overly sensitised and even though he desperately tells himself that this experimentation is evidently dangerous, that it is beginning to destroy his reason, he can’t find it in himself to stop. It isn’t even an elaborate tumble into sensation. Just the brief, firm, rub of fingers against his scrotum, squeezing lightly, cupping the weight of it, before sliding his hand upwards, and fastening it around the shaft instead. Since he hadn’t anticipated even reaching this point there’s no lubricant to hand, or at least within reach, to facilitate the more comfortable slide of his tight grasp along the organ. Of course he reasons that he ought to stop, at least for long enough to scrabble for something with which to make the process easier, but that would require the willpower to do so, and thought and action, so very often the same thing, have become entirely divorced.

He’s trying to reason himself out of his own actions, even while those actions occur. Not that his body seems to be paying his mind much heed. Were he more coherent, or at least, capable of stringing a thought or two together in a rational fashion, he’d note that his hands seem to be going about their own business, with little input from his higher brain functions. His dominant hand, the right, certainly seems to be quite capable of turning in a curiously efficiently wrist flick of a motion, while his fingers squeeze down with just the right amount of pressure above the glans, tugging lightly at his foreskin. The physical stimulus deadens his other senses and he can barely feel himself clutching at the bedsheets with his free hand or squeezing his eyes tightly shut, against the resounding silence in his mind.

Yet, having achieved an erection quickly enough, one hand fastened firmly around his shaft, squeezing it tightly, occasionally rubbing a thumb against the now exposed glans, there seems no real escape from overriding sensation. He’s arching back against the bad, trying to muffle his strangled gasps with the back of his free hand, but still, the deadening silence, the absence of any thought in his mind, checks the process entirely. Having come so far already, he’s desperate for an end to it, for that staggeringly pedestrian release that his body seems to have been aching for for much too long. But it seems impossible. It’s as if some cruel block has been placed upon his senses, so that all he can do is strain and writhe and whimper in desperation. The sound of his own cries ring in his ears and some muted, rational, part of his brain registers how pathetic and needy he must sound. It’s enough to trigger the thread of connection that suddenly blossoms large in his mind. He can picture Mycroft’s cool and superior expression, can feel those cold eyes boring into him. Mycroft’s voice in his ear telling him that he’s weak, that he’s merely an object to be acted on, to be manipulated as Mycroft sees fit. In his mind, he can see himself, helpless, vulnerable, begging Mycroft for something that he doesn’t even want to comprehend.

“Please.”

The word is dragged from his throat in desperation and defeat, half swallowed by a sob. Even as his grip tightens and he can feel viscous fluid smear his fingers, all he can focus on his that terrible, overwhelming, feeling of humiliation. It sears through him like physical pain, an existential agony that nonetheless spurs his body on. All that’s left is his final submission to it. That’s all it will take to grant him his miserable release.

“Mycroft.”

He chokes out his brother’s name against his knuckles, even as hot, wet, spurts of seamen splatter against his hand and stomach.

Afterwards, when the tremors die down, when he can manage just about enough coherency to organise his limbs, he curls up on his side, knees drawn up, hands, one bearing his own teeth marks, the other still damp with his own ejaculate, drawn in against his chest. He closes his eyes and tries to ignore the tears that are falling. He tries to tell himself that this is simply an involuntary chemical reaction that he need not concern himself with, but he can’t lie to himself, not in this. The shame that spurred him on before, now drains him of all defences and he will need all his wits about him soon enough. He will need every barb and shield that he can manufacture, if only to keep himself sane. Nobody else need know what he’s done or whose name he cried out in those last moments, but Mycroft will. Mycroft will look at him and know, and that will be his undoing. When Mycroft turns away in disgust, the humiliation that tears through his defences now, will flay him to the bone.

**Author's Note:**

> "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful."  
> – Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Grey)


End file.
